Monthly Archives: June 2015

Edinburgh, Day Two

We’ve exhausted ourselves yet again, but it was worth it. We toured Edinburgh Castle in the morning (where we witnessed the 21-gun salute of the canons in honor of the anniversary of the Queen’s coronation), Holyrood Palace (where I fell completely in love with the ruins of the Abbey), and a little bit of time at the National Museum of Scotland.  We had a wonderful lunch at a tiny little place called ‘The Edinburgh Larder’, but ran into a snafu at dinner, as it seems no restaurants here allow under 18’s after 8 pm.

Cant win ’em all, I guess!
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Our tour guide, who we would have followed all day just to listen to his accent.image

imageMural in the chamber where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to her son James.

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imageFrom the castle you can see out to the Firth of Forth.

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Holyrood Abbey

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It’s hard are to take a bad picture in such a beautiful place. I’ve included this last one, though, from The Royal Mile looking out towards Holyrood (and beyond to the Firth) simply to show what Edinburgh looks like at 9 pm.  It’s about quarter to midnight now, and the sky still isn’t quite a full dark; there’s still some deep, lovely turquoise.


Fancy joining a KAL?


Hello my fellow knitters,

I’m running a KAL for my pattern Wind & StormThe first 10 peeps who commit to the KAL will get a free copy of the pattern. All other participants will receive the pattern at a discounted rate. And for all participants that complete the pattern, I will do a raffle giveaway!

This KAL is to celebrate the re-release (this time self-published) of the Wind & Storm pattern which was originally published by Knit Now in Issue #30 in 2014.  I'm nearly done with the self-published version which will have its official release in the fall (mid-September) but I’ll have it up beforehand as a soft release and for the purposes of this KAL.

The KAL key dates are as follows: 
Start: June 15, 2015 
End: September 15, 2015
Yarn and knitting requirements can be found on the pattern page for Wind & Storm.
And, feel free to use the image above as your project image place-holder until we officially start the KAL! It's great to have people knitting the same thing as you and when you run into questions or issues, we all help each other!  It's a lovely experience if you've never done one before.




Fire Red Roses …

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Hullo from Scotland!

I am super duper jet-lagged and haven’t had much luck blogging from my iPad in the past, so bear with me as I try and figure this out.

imageVictoria Street

imageLove this pig!

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Ross Fountain with Edinburgh Castle above

imageimageWe went and toured Greyfriars Kirkyard and all of its creepy glory.

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The tombs, crypts, and funerary ornaments are just amazing. image
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Greyfriar’s Bobbyimage

The cafe where JK Rowling wrote much of Harry Potter.  (And we did spot the graves of Tom Riddle and a MacGonagall in the kirkyard).  We want to head back there for a proper cuppa tomorrow.image

Statuary in front of St Gile’s Cathedral.image

The Heart of Midlothian (the former administrative center of the town).imageAnd for all my doubters out there: we stopped by a Sainsbury’s grocery and the eggs are sold not refrigerated. Seriously. Eggs are amazing and can keep for ages.

Tomorrow we tour the castle and Holyrood Palace, and hopefully it is not intensely windy, rainy, and cold again. But if it is, we’ll do like the clerk at Sainsbury’s said to us: “Enjoy our lovely “weather”.


Tagged: Trips

Feeling Crabby

Our little guy has been having lots of teething days.  On those days, he moans and groans and drools.  He is so sad and gloomy.  I suffer with him.  Teething sucks.   That inspired me to illustrate this one...



I learned tons about combining Illustrator's vector shapes with textures in Photoshop in this Skillshare class by Matt Kaufenberg.  I started out with a pencil and marker sketch.


Then, I found something that has been so freeing to me... sketching in Photoshop.  I know it's a weird hang-up for a traditional illustrator, but I hate wasting paper.  And, when you sketch a lot, you inevitably end up using loads and loads of paper.  And, no matter how cheap it is, you kind of feel the weight of how many trees you've decimated on your creative journey.  Okay, maybe it's just me.  In any case, it doesn't pain me to do sketches on layers in Photoshop.  Not. one. bit.  So, off I went!

I started off using traditional shapes for figure drawing (can't help my training!)...

 I knew I didn't want to go this route.  I have had a kind of artist's block when it comes to drawing babies.  Every time I attempted to draw my son, it came out so weird!  I wasn't happy with any of the results, so I just focused on expressions he makes when he's in a funk...

I had a breakthrough with that big head up top.  I then pushed the exaggeration of the size of the head even further.


After drawing the top one, I said out loud, "aww."  And that's when I knew I was onto something!  So, off I went using the techniques from the Skillshare class, and the end result is the first photo from this post.

Feeling Crabby

Our little guy has been having lots of teething days.  On those days, he moans and groans and drools.  He is so sad and gloomy.  I suffer with him.  Teething sucks.   That inspired me to illustrate this one...



I learned tons about combining Illustrator's vector shapes with textures in Photoshop in this Skillshare class by Matt Kaufenberg.  I started out with a pencil and marker sketch.


Then, I found something that has been so freeing to me... sketching in Photoshop.  I know it's a weird hang-up for a traditional illustrator, but I hate wasting paper.  And, when you sketch a lot, you inevitably end up using loads and loads of paper.  And, no matter how cheap it is, you kind of feel the weight of how many trees you've decimated on your creative journey.  Okay, maybe it's just me.  In any case, it doesn't pain me to do sketches on layers in Photoshop.  Not. one. bit.  So, off I went!

I started off using traditional shapes for figure drawing (can't help my training!)...

 I knew I didn't want to go this route.  I have had a kind of artist's block when it comes to drawing babies.  Every time I attempted to draw my son, it came out so weird!  I wasn't happy with any of the results, so I just focused on expressions he makes when he's in a funk...

I had a breakthrough with that big head up top.  I then pushed the exaggeration of the size of the head even further.


After drawing the top one, I said out loud, "aww."  And that's when I knew I was onto something!  So, off I went using the techniques from the Skillshare class, and the end result is the first photo from this post.